Story idea alert: Since the start of the year, an online battle has been brewing focused on just how stressful it is to be a college or university professor. A recent article for Forbes by writer Susan Adams landed the opening punch, detailing why professors apparently enjoy the “least stressful job of 2013.” University professors have a lot less stress than most of us,” Adams writes. “Unless they teach summer school, they are off between May and September and they enjoy long breaks during the school year, including a month over Christmas and New Year’s and another chunk of time in the spring. Even when school is in session they don’t spend too many hours in the classroom. For tenure-track professors, there is some pressure to publish books and articles, but deadlines are few.”

Allegations of Ivy League hazing. Alice in Wonderland on LSD. A Biblical studies professor busted in a child predator sting. A student squirrel whisperer. A 280-pound black bear falling from a tree. And something called milking. These buzzwords and teaser descriptions factor into a few of the many viral creations published or posted by college media over the past year. The student press was responsible for an especially high number of viral reports, columns, videos, photos, headlines, and tweets in 2012. Collectively, their moments in the digital spotlight offer a fascinating foundation for a student press year in review– a glimpse at what was especially popular, controversial, funny, unexpected, and out of control. In that spirit, here is a chronological rundown of top college media moments and content that blew up online in 2012.

The Emerald at the University of Oregon is welcoming in 2013 with a fun, furious thunderclap of online innovation. In honor of this evening’s Fiesta Bowl battle between the Oregon Ducks and the Kansas State University Wildcats, the UO student student media group has taken over its own homepage. The reconstructed web digs feature game-day tweets (all with a #GoDucks hashtag), Instagram photos (including those geo-tagged close to the stadium in Glendale, Ariz.), a reader chat board, and stories from a half-dozen Emerald staffers reporting on Fiesta football and other festivities in person. The tweets, pics, chat, and content are each presented in their own vertical streams, updated in real-time, making for a fun top to bottom wait-scroll-browse-repeat for even casual fans.

Journalists are currently abuzz about the University of Washington men’s basketball team– not for its play but for how it’s allowed to be covered. Athletics officials at the school recently told a local sports reporter to stop live-tweeting so much during an early season game. The weird warning revealed a new official rule instituted for all live coverage of UW games by outside press– 20 tweets tops at basketball games and no more than 45 tweets during football games. It is the latest sports reporting body blow at the college level brought to light this semester.

On Tuesday, multiple thieves swiped nearly 500 copies of The Signal at Georgia State University. According to a Signal tweet a half hour ago, they grabbed the copies from newsstands near the campus bookstore. Security video footage captures at least three alleged thieves– all male, seemingly student age– in full-color, high-resolution, brazenly carrying Signal stacks away.

The Red & Black at the University of Georgia ran a full-page “trash-talk advertisement” in Thursday’s paper– against its own football team. The ad, paid for by supporters of the University of Florida football program, features a strong-armed Gator with gritted teeth taking down a hapless UGA Bulldogs football player. The image aligns with the thrust of the ad, which lays out a number of reasons “Why Our Gators Will Bury the Dawgs Little Bone . . . Again.” The number-two ranked Gators are taking on the 10th-ranked Bulldogs this afternoon in Athens, Ga., in a marquee conference match-up.

University Daily Kansan sports writer Blake Schuster says athletics officials at the University of Kansas warned him in a private meeting about asking questions at the most recent press conference with head football coach Charlie Weis. The reason? Their concerns about “lingering ill-will among members of the football program.”

Here is a starter list of 20 must-follow Twitter feeds– specifically those that will help students learn the craft and keep up with what journalists are debating, enjoying and attempting to understand on a daily basis. Some feature journalism, media and technology news. Others offer advice and job and internship listings. And still others are kept by journalists and big thinkers whose new media maxims, mindsets and methods are worth emulating. The must-follow feeds are listed in alphabetical order.

Charlie Weis was wicked mad late last week. The head coach of the University of Kansas football team lashed out at The University Daily Kansan in a 140-character burst of righteous anger. The tweet spurred national attention and a public scolding from some members of the press.

Late last month, athletics officials at Stony Brook University threatened the press credentials of a student magazine in response to a staffer’s comedic live-tweeting of a football game. It is one of the stranger student press censorship cases I have come across.

It is a tweet staffers no doubt wish they could take back: “i think i might be gay??” The odd questioning message popped up yesterday on the twitter feed of The Technician, the student newspaper at North Carolina State University. It was quickly deleted, but not before at least one reader spotted and retweeted it. The paper soon after apologized.

By Steven Chappell — The best thing about running the @comminternships feed has been my virtual meetings with many of my followers. One of those followers, @QUCommCareers, has become a virtual mirror of the feed, particularly for students in the Northeast corner of the U.S. The man behind the feed is Joseph Catrino, assistant dean […]

In August of 2010, I began a new job as the Student Media Specialist at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. Along with advising the student media, one of my duties is also serving as the internship coordinator for students in Communication and Media Studies at the college. As a social media hound, I knew there had to be a way to use Twitter as an aggregator to inform students about available internships. A few weeks into the semester, @comminternships was born.

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